Lower Sac Sampler
At a time when many great trout rivers suffer from sagging fish populations and burgeoning angler interest, one major river does not. Northern California’s lower Sacramento River (known locally as the Sac or lower Sac) has strong populations of heavy-bodied wild rainbow trout, and anglers enjoy better fishing now than at possibly any time in the past 35 years. The fish grow large, the angling pressure remains within realistic limits (far below the numbers of anglers competing for space on more famous, yet less productive, trout streams) and access to this great fishing is convenient, as the river carves its way through the city of Redding.
What magic transformed this river to its present status? Salmon. Major efforts to improve the once legendary runs of now endangered Sacramento River Chinook have also enhanced one of the West’s best year-round trout streams.
Changing Fishery
The upper Sacramento, McCloud, and Pit river systems (including the Fall River and Hat Creek) all merge into Shasta Lake. The lower Sacramento River flows out of this vast reservoir and bisects the city of Redding before continuing south into the Sacramento River Delta and eventually San Francisco Bay.
Redding, with a population of 90,000, is a community dedicated to piscatorial passions, with trout pictured on the restroom tiles in city hall, and a 40-foot sculpture of a fly fisher netting a trout gracing the building’s front lawn. The lower Sacramento is just one of the many fabled trout waters near Redding.
The creation of Shasta Dam (and Keswick Dam, a smaller, secondary impoundment below Shasta and just above the city of Redding) in the mid-1940s blocked anadromous fish passage and warmed the water, making it inhospitable for salmon and steelhead. To mitigate the effects of the dam, a temperature control device (TCD) installed at Shasta Dam in 1997 allows the Bureau of Reclamation to precisely control the water temperature of the outflow.
The TCD pulls water from different depths of Shasta Lake in order to ensure optimum temperatures for spawning Chinook salmon and their offspring. The target temperature is 56 degrees F. at the Red Bluff Diversion Dam, 49 miles downstream from Keswick Dam, effectively guaranteeing water temperatures from 51 to 55 degrees in the upstream stretches near Redding.
Today the Sacramento is the only river we’re aware of with four distinct runs of Chinook salmon fall, late fall, winter, and spring. The winter run was nearly extinct before the completion of the TCD, reaching a historic low of 186 returning fish in 1994. By contrast, the recorded run in 2003 was more than 9,000.
On top of improved salmon returns, regulated tailwater temperatures have extended the lower Sac rainbow trout fishery farther downstream and helped to bolster aquatic insect hatches. The lower Sac, originally known for its caddis hatches—specifically Brachycentrus (grannom) in the spring and Hydropsyche (spotted sedge) all summer long—now supports Baetis mayflies, which are common on overcast days through the fall and winter; Little Yellow Stoneflies and PMDs in the spring and summer; midges year-round; a few Salmonflies and Golden Stoneflies; and even Hexagenia mayflies.
The nature of the lower Sacramento is ever-changing. Flows from the dams fluctuate through the seasons, sometimes without warning. The hatches on the river constantly shift, and water and weather conditions make predictable dry-fly opportunities scarce, though they do exist.
Combined, these factors make the lower Sac difficult to learn, especially through the varying seasons. Hiring a competent local drift-boat guide is beneficial to understanding the water. Although wade-fishing opportunities appear at times of low flows, drifting the river is the most efficient way to find fish year-round.
Techniques and Tactics
In spite of increasingly better insect hatches, the lower Sac remains predominantly a subsurface fishery. Consistently rising trout are a pleasant anomaly rather than an everyday event, making the river difficult for newcomers to master.
Locals break it down by dividing the large river into small, recognizable elements. “Look for edges and drop-offs, and good cobble bottom with decent depth rather than areas with shallow, sandy bottom,” says lower Sac guide Ernie Denison. In a recent barroom discussion, he was quickly countered by fellow guide Lonnie Boles “Yeah, but you can’t forget about the salmon redds, either.”
The importance of salmon to lower Sac trout cannot be overstated. When salmon are spawning, their redds—or spawning beds—offer crucial clues to finding the trout waiting downstream to ambush wayward eggs and dislodged aquatic nymphs.
October Chinooks
Fall on the lower Sac provides consistent trout fishing. Predictable low flows provide limited wade-fishing opportunities in and around the city of Redding. The flows on the river drop from high summer discharges averaging 15,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) to around 6,000 cfs by the middle of October. Ideal wading conditions occur at flows below 7,000 cfs.
Autumn signals the arrival of the largest of the four annual Chinook runs. The first salmon of the season roll in the deeper pools during the early breaths of fall, and congregate in shallow gravel at the tailouts of long flats and at the heads of heavy riffles. Where there was once smooth gravel, obvious speed bumps appear under the water, providing road maps to where the female salmon have moved hundreds of pounds of gravel by thrashing their powerful tails against the rocks. As the salmon build their redds, they dislodge hundreds of caddis, mayfly, and stonefly nymphs, not to mention the high-protein eggs that frequently drift downstream.
Copyright © 2012 Intermedia Outdoors
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